Culinary Misfits is Saving Ugly Fruits & Veggies from Rejection

There are nearly one billion starving people in the world, while the populations in US and Europe have nearly twice as much food as they need. A lot of food is wasted in households, supermarkets, restaurants etc, but the most amazing fact is that half of the crop never makes it off the farm, because they don’t have a flawless look.

Photo courtesy of Culinary Misfits. Source: Facebook

Culinary Misfits is a mobile catering company which uses as raw material only natural nerdslike crooked cucumbers, over-sized beets or three-legged carrots.

The company was founded by two product designers that live in Berlin with the purpose to raise awareness about how much food is thrown out, and to inspire people to appreciate and eat the whole harvest in all its diversity.

Founders Lea Emma Rosa Brumsack and Tanja Krakowski buy fruits and veggies that don’t fit in any standard norm from regional organic farms, in and around Berlin. With these crops, that normally wouldn’t have been used commercially and probably will have ended as food for animals, they are creating good looking vegetarian (and often vegan) dishes which they sell at different food events. The two designers are also trying to bring in attention other kinds of forgotten old varieties such as wild herbs.

Photo courtesy of Culinary Misfits. Source: Facebook

Since they founded Culinary Misfits, Lea’s and Tanja’s vegan recipes became popular in very short time. This is how the two women decided to raise money through a crow-funding campaign to help them open a special store in which they will cook and distribute their specially manufactured culinary products. In the store customers will also find enough misfits available for purchase.

Although they have reached their goal to raise 15,000 euros, it seems that the money weren’t enough for their plans and more than a year has passed since then.

Fortunately, Lea and Tanja recently announced on their Facebook page that they are still working on their plans and the store will finally be opened this year.

Below you can watch a beautiful video presentation of Culinary Misfits for the crow-funding campaign, made by Laurent Hoffmann.

Culinary Misfits is a truly special business that is drawing us attention over the fact that in our quest to achieve perfection we have disconnected from the natural course of the nature.